Writing a few years before the French Revolution, Beaumarchais pours his rage at the aristocracy into a comedy of class and sexual inequality that manages equal parts hilarity and outrage. Originally produced in 1784, the play served as inspiration for Mozart's famous 1786 opera.

Three years after the happy ending of The Barber of Seville (to which Marriage is a sequel), it’s the valet’s turn to marry. But his master the Count has tired of his lovely Countess and lusts for Figaro’s bride-to-be, Suzanne; he determines to revive the ancient droit du seigneur—the lord of the manor’s right to bed any new bride on her wedding night. Figaro and the women concoct a counter-plot, but the Count’s page, Cherubin, makes hash of it through his passionate crush on the Countess. The multiple layers of misunderstanding yield one of the most perfect farce scenes of all time, in one of the most scathing critiques of aristocratic privilege ever written.